The Way It Is

I have no idea what happened.  There was an all-day adoption conference, followed by a birthday party, followed by sending my oldest child and my husband off to a professional hockey game (the 10 year old's birthday celebration of choice), and I looked at my other 3 children and said, "Do you want to have oatmeal for dinner?"  The oatmeal was started and then I ran upstairs to help them with baths and came back down to this:

Let's just say the jars that screw on underneath my stove to catch any drips were completely full of oatmeal!  And if you've ever wondered if you can soak that ignitor part of your gas stove in soap and water and still have it work to actually light again, you can and it does.  But, I'm glad I snapped a picture of that mess, because right now in this life mothering 4 young children, there are moments pretty much like that every day.  God is refining me though, I'm slowly learning not to get upset, just take a deep breath and start cleaning up the mess.

In other examples of my un-super mom abilities . . .

Our 4 year old Little Girl adopted from Ethiopia has only been speaking English about 14 months, and although she seems pretty fluent there are nuances to our language that still trip her up, so of course, I'm very careful with the terms I use with her . . .Um NOT.

Like today Little Girl and I were headed into a store to get about 5 things, but right before we went in I decided I should dash into the store right next-door to see if they had something I'd been looking for.  I said to Little Girl, "Let's just run in this store really fast."  She looked at me with huge, gleaming, incredulous eyes and said, "This is a kind of store you can RUN in?!"  Little Girl LOVES to run more than just about anything else in life.  But, no, sadly, I had to quickly set her straight that it was not in fact a store she could run in, but that I meant we were just going to hurry in and out." 

Then there are ALL the questions.  Little Girl is in a huge "Why?" phase right now.  I don't know if it's the age or something about her current grasp of the English language now having spoken it for 14 months.  I love getting to be the person who teaches her so much and recognize daily what a privilege it is but honestly, it also wears me out!

I think I've been answering too many of her questions with, "That's just the way it is."

Because today when she asked why a bus had a red gas thing and I said, "I don't know, that's how they made it."  And then she said, "WHAT?"  of course because that's what she always says when I answer one of her questions (my theory is that she hears me, but she needs the extra repetition to help her process the information).  So I repeated, but more half-heartily with, "I don't know, that's just the way it is."  And then she asked very dramatically,

"Why is everything the way it is?!"

Good question, Little Girl, good question.  Now Mama needs a nap before any more questions.  That's just the way it is.


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